Ma Nuit Chez Maud

Hypothesis A:
Society and politics are meaningless.

Hypothesis B:
History has meaning.

I'm not at all sure
B is more likely to be true than A.

More likely the reverse.

Let's even suppose B has
a 10 percent chance of being true,

and A has 80 percent.

Nevertheless...

I have no choice
but to opt for B,

because only the hypothesis
that history has meaning...

allows me to go on living.

Suppose I bet on A, and B was true,
despite the lesser odds.

I'd have thrown away my life.

So I must choose B
to justify my life and actions.

There's an 80 percent chance I'm wrong,
but that doesn't matter.

Mathematical hope.
Potential gain divided by probability.

With your hypothesis B,

though the probability is slight,
the possible gain is infinite.

In your case, a meaning to life.
In Pascal's, eternal salvation.

It was Gorky, Lenin
or maybe Mayakovsky

who said
about the Russian revolution

that the situation forced them
to choose the one chance in a thousand.

Because hope became infinitely
greater if you took that chance

than if you didn't take it.